Harnessing long-term gridded rainfall data and microtopographic insights to characterise risk from surface water flooding

Kriti Mukherjee; Mónica Rivas Casado; Rakhee Ramachandran; Paul Leinster

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0310753

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 7, 2023
10 Jun 2024 Decision Letter - Guy J-P. Schumann, Editor PONE-D-23-36834Harnessing long-term gridded rainfall data and microtopographic insights to characterise risk from surface water floodingPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mukherjee, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. As the editor I took the liberty in looking at your manuscript after receiving the first reviewer's feedback because we have been waiting too long for the second reviewer to get back to us and your manuscript topic is in my field of expertise. I agree with all the comments received and have no additional points to add. In your response to the comments and revised version, please ensure you address all comments. 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Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The authors have done wonderful study by understanding the micro topography to estimate the surface water flooding vulnerability at Cockeremouth in UK. Such study will be very useful to plan mitigation measures in vulnerable areas in other places of the world. However, there are certain observation the authors needs to elaborate upon (i) What is the extent of accuracy of rainfall data obtained fom HadUK. The authors have mentioned that they have done pearson coeffcient analysis with GPM data but have not adequately described in the text. If pearson test is conducted then the authors may present the relationship between GPM and HadUK data (ii) The authors have mentioned regarding the depth of flood that is hazardous but they could have categoriesed minimum rainfall amount that can be considered as threshold. (iii) is objective 2 needed at this point of time. (iv) Whether monthly rainfall amount can identify the rainfall hazard (v) The authors should have referred to some other already published studies about reliability of gridded precipitation data with ground based observed data on different temporal scale such as daily and monthly. The authors have compared the HadUK data with GPM data in this present study. GPM data might not give accurate rainfall amounts in given area. (vi) Projection data is for future scenarios, so I think the authors could have concentraterd more on application of methodology and standardized it. (vii) The authors have mentioned about the TWI, but what is the scenario of spilling of both the rivers as it is at the confluence point. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310753.r001
Revision 1
12 Aug 2024 Author Response The authors are thankful to the editor and the anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on the article. Below we provide answers to the queries and concerns. Journal requirements: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. • We ensure that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE’s style requirements. 2. We note that you have indicated that there are restrictions to data sharing for this study. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. a. If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., a Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, etc.). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. • We updated the data availability statement in our revised manuscript. Data can be available from a repository on request and approval. b. If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. You also have the option of uploading the data as Supporting Information files, but we would recommend depositing data directly to a data repository if possible. 3. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. • As above 4. We note that Figures 1 and 13 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: • We replaced Figures 1 and 13 (Figure 10 in the revised manuscript) by replacing the basemap by Ordnance Survey maps available in the public domain and provided appropriate referencing as suggested on their website (https://osdatahub.os.uk/, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/) 5. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. • The reference style has been modified to comply with the journal requirement. Reviewer #1: The authors have done wonderful study by understanding the micro topography to estimate the surface water flooding vulnerability at Cockeremouth in UK. Such study will be very useful to plan mitigation measures in vulnerable areas in other places of the world. The authors thank the reviewer for the encouraging comments. However, there are certain observation the authors needs to elaborate upon (i) What is the extent of accuracy of rainfall data obtained fom HadUK. The authors have mentioned that they have done pearson coeffcient analysis with GPM data but have not adequately described in the text. If pearson test is conducted then the authors may present the relationship between GPM and HadUK data We agree with the reviewer. We forgot to report on the values of Pearson coefficient in the results. We have now included it in the revised manuscript. Please see L404-405. (ii) The authors have mentioned regarding the depth of flood that is hazardous but they could have categoriesed minimum rainfall amount that can be considered as threshold. The minimum monthly rainfall amount that could be hazardous for Cockermouth has been identified and mentioned in the manuscript (L391). However, the minimum daily rainfall amount could not be categorized because the short term (daily or hourly) extreme values are not captured well by the interpolated gridded data as we observed for the 2015 December incident (Figure 9). (iii) is objective 2 needed at this point of time. We removed objective 2 and related analysis from the revised manuscript. We have now two objectives in our revised manuscript and eleven figures. Figure 13 of the original manuscript is Figure 10 in the revised manuscript. (iv) Whether monthly rainfall amount can identify the rainfall hazard Monthly rainfall amount can identify rainfall hazard if long-term monthly rainfall time series is available. Based on the HadUK data for Cockermouth Region, we observed that the value is approximately 200 mm (mentioned in L391 in the revised manuscript). The same methodology can be applied to quality checked station based rainfall data, such as from MIDAS (https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/220a65615218d5c9cc9e4785a3234bd0) and would be more accurate. There is no station data available for Cockermouth Region, but HadUK data used in this study was generated using MIDAS data (Hollis et al., 2019). (v) The authors should have referred to some other already published studies about reliability of gridded precipitation data with ground based observed data on different temporal scale such as daily and monthly. The authors have compared the HadUK data with GPM data in this present study. GPM data might not give accurate rainfall amounts in given area. We agree that GPM data may not give accurate rainfall amounts because of its coarser resolution (10 km). However, as there are no historical station observations available for Cockermouth Region, therefore, GPM data was one of the options available to us for validation. We also added a few lines in the revised manuscript that HadUK data went through several quality controls before it was published in the public domain (L125-126, L251-257). (vi) Projection data is for future scenarios, so I think the authors could have concentraterd more on application of methodology and standardized it. We removed the future scenarios and related analysis from the revised manuscript. (vii) The authors have mentioned about the TWI, but what is the scenario of spilling of both the rivers as it is at the confluence point. Spilling of both rivers would be considered a result of fluvial flooding. As we are only focusing this paper on surface water (pluvial) flooding, we have not considered this factor into account. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310753.r002
6 Sep 2024 Decision Letter - Guy J-P. Schumann, Editor Harnessing long-term gridded rainfall data and microtopographic insights to characterise risk from surface water flooding PONE-D-23-36834R1 Dear Dr. Mukherjee, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Guy J-P. Schumann Section Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310753.r003
Formally Accepted
13 Sep 2024 Acceptance Letter - Guy J-P. Schumann, Editor PONE-D-23-36834R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mukherjee, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Guy J-P. Schumann Section Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310753.r004

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